“Yes, they do. I can imagine dying for love.” He had gulped his bourbon and got up to make another drink. “He must have been a sensitive soul and couldn’t live without you.”

“He was ugly drunk.” She laughed. “Is that for me?”

“That what?” He looked around, sneaking another peak at her barely covered, delicate sparrow’s nest.

“That.” She pointed at the front of his bathing suit and the protuberant boner that stuck out against the material in the usual silly way. Forty-five degrees and confined.

“You might say that.” He covered himself with a hand and sat down. How could he forget such a key item?

“You must be a kinky ole artist to get aroused over a cripple lady.” She put the afghan over his lap in a mock horror.

“I better get going. It’s a long walk to Brazilian Court.” That had to be her hand, he thought, staring at a parrot up in a palm tree. “May I visit you sometime?” She had worked the suit open.

“Why, yes. It would be flattering. You seem a little goofy but then it might be the Indiana style.”

“Michigan.” He reached out and touched a breast, then moved his hand downward. There was the question of whether she could feel anything, but he could.

“I wish it wasn’t daylight, dammit.” Her hand moved with superlative deftness. “If it was dark you could stand up and shove that thing plumb in my mouth.”

Bam. That was it. His legs shot out straight and rigid; he slid off the edge of the chaise with a groan. She barely let go or she would have tipped over again. They were quiet for a while, with Laura running her fingers through his damp hair. She lit a cigarette and he watched the sanderlings down on the beach to the clink of the ice in her glass.

“That’s simply the most romantic thing I’ve ever done.” She was laughing again.

Warlock turned and rearranged himself on his knees. He kissed her deeply with tears in his eyes.

Chapter 36

He awoke with a start at midnight from the aftereffect of an acrid bourbon belch; searing polymers, and eardrums taut from listening to dreams. An author had called dreams “soul chasers,” he remembered.

Linen certainly didn’t hold a press, especially if you slept in it; his cuff buttons had imprinted his face with three red welts, and his fingers traced the scars before the mirror. The mark of Cain? He smiled the sardonic smile of the survivor: he had one of those rare strong hangovers, not strong in pain, but strong in the sense that he felt strong. Strong was the only word for it. In the shower her deep fated laughter replayed its somber music. Laura. Her name now stood for the glitter of the tropic moon they had watched, a moon as plump as a steamed mussel above the Atlantic.